The state of wellbeing: Herd health

TIM GERAGHTY, VETERINARY CENTRE MANAGER, SRUC

What is it, why does it matter and how do you do it?

For almost 25 years I have been studying or working as a farm animal vet and like a lot of my colleagues, I have developed a strong interest in herd health.

It would be reasonable to say that at times I am almost entirely pre-occupied with the concept.

A herd is not just a group of animals, and health is not just the absence of disease. For me, herd health means that the animals that exist to support our food security should live in a continuous state of complete wellbeing.

While I (reluctantly) accept that this is probably an unattainable ideal, as a guiding principle it can be seriously useful. How big is the gap between where we are now and ‘perfect’ herd health, and what does this gap cost us?

The Global Burden of Animal Diseases (GBAD) are a collaborative group of researchers that are working to try to answer this question. The reason they want to measure it is that once you measure something, you can manage it, and if you start managing a very big number even a small improvement can deliver huge economic benefits.

In truth, perfect 100% herd health is an almost impossible goal, and given that no farm is perfect, there is always work to do. If a Scottish beef herd moved from ‘good average’ health outcomes to ‘perfect’ in current market conditions, it is not unreasonable to estimate that the immediate value gain would be in the region of £400 per cow, per year, compared to the current £350 per cow gross margin, as reported in a recent SRUC study.

Gain can be measured in other ways too, such as time saved on farm (prevention is quicker than cure) or carbon, other resource or antibiotic reduction. The gains to be made in animal welfare or farmer mental health (from working with healthier stock in more profitable systems) are harder to quantify but could possibly yield even greater gain again.

So what is causing the gap between where we are in reality and the utopia of herd health?

In vet school we were taught a lot about the causes of poor herd health. There are endless lists of diseases which impact on welfare and production. We were also taught that nutrition played a key role, as did husbandry, management, farm type, genetics and, of course, weather.

In reality the cause of the gap is a complex mix of inter-related biological, meteorological and economic processes. You can spend an entire lifetime learning and identifying any one single aspect of these causes.

Having tried to learn something about most of them (with greater success in some areas than in others), it is likely impossible for any one person to learn enough to fully comprehend the restrictions on reaching perfect herd health.

So, in a way the real cause of the gap is ultimately our own limited ability to create, access and most importantly share our individual knowledge about the complex things that can lead to poor animal health outcomes. We are all the cause, and so we are all the solution.

So, how do we start to resolve the issue? There are five critical factors needed to close the gap in our ability to manage and maintain the best herd health possible, regardless of whether you are working on an individual farm, across an industry or globally.

Firstly, we need to work together and collaborate, sharing knowledge and expertise. Nobody knows it all, but we all know something, and so only effective groups of individuals are able to close the gap and benefit from herd health. On an individual farm this means we need the owner, manager, staff, vet, nutritionist, and consultants really communicating and sharing best practice. Time spent improving this communication will yield big returns.

We need to learn how to define success. We need to set targets that are measurable, because once you measure you can manage effectively. The whole team should know exactly what you are trying to achieve and by when. Standard KPIs (like calves weaned per 100 cows) work really well. Write them down and stick them in a prominent place.

Establish an effective plan. Try to guess why you will fail to hit the target before you actually fail to hit the target. Asking the team to help will allow you to quickly identify the biggest risks faced. For every risk you think of, come up with at least one way to avoid it. This will create a practical, simple plan for better health.

Learn as you go along and don’t worry about failure! We all fail. Don’t avoid admitting it, don’t pretend it’s anything other than it is, but don’t worry about it.

Failure is how we learn, so the only question we need to answer is why did we fail? Get the team involved. Check the ration again, take samples to investigate the disease, do post-mortem exams, check the EBV of the bull, find a specialist that can help! If we investigate, we learn and if we learn, we can improve.

Achieving ‘perfect’ herd health may be a lofty (and perhaps unattainable) goal but committing to a direction of travel that says we can do better, will yield immense benefits for all.

timothy.geraghty@sruc.ac.uk